Tyrants Always Win

I

First Day of the New Term

A/N: Ah, the fresh smell of new-story. This story begins anywhere from five to fifteen years after we left off previously. If you're wondering what the hell this is, and what's going on, this is the third part of three, the previous two being "The Library" and "Calamity Plus One", in that order. Enjoy!

It was just a normal day in my country.

All of the students were coming back after having the previous week off to do whatever we pleased. The train was ten minutes late in the morning, giving me next to no time to switch into my school shoes and check the bulletin board for any new announcements before going to my classroom. There were three transfer students starting today, and two people I don't ever recall seeing much had switched out of the school. One student net gain, which seemed normal enough; Class D had four open seats in the back that our teacher would love to fill.

I settled into my desk by the window, waving at friends who were across the room and smiling at people who walked by and called my name. The atmosphere was happy as usual, upbeat and ready for the day ahead. The murmur of the classroom began dying down once Mayumi-sensei entered the room, her hair dancing to each side as she walked through the door jauntily.

"Welcome back everyone, if everyone will settle down, I'll start with the attendance and we can get right down to it!" Sensei was a pretty woman, tall and curvy, with jet black hair that hung lightly about her, highlighting the fairness of her skin, making her look like an eccentric foreign super model, making us girls jealous of the natural beauty she possessed. She had curls that sat nicely and had volume; if I tried to do the same, my hair would just frizz up and be all a mess! Still, not everyone can get the "tough girl" look to complement them as well as I can, so it wasn't more than a passing whimsy.

"I'd like to introduce the new students starting today, before anything else." The three students walked into the room through the front entrance and stood next to sensei, with everyone silently sizing them up before anyone said a word.

The first boy was tall and thin, with an ill-fitting uniform that revealed portions of his arms above his wrists, and he tried to make himself look as small as possible. It wasn't that effective of a method, because he was a good 50 centimeters taller than the girl standing next to him.

She was a petite little thing, probably not much taller than a middle-schooler, with vibrantly dyed red hair covering most of her face, one eye poking out from underneath. That sole eye was twinkling in the way an old man's eye does when he knows something you don't. She looked like she would be the type of girl to get in trouble for trying to climb over the fence during PE.

The other boy was of average height, and average build, with nothing out of the ordinary about him, which made me look at him longer than the other transfer students. His uniform was perfectly clean and looked to have been starched heavily as well. He had his hands behind his back and stood up straight, smiling slightly as he looked out to the class, and he gave a slight wave to everyone before quickly returning his hand behind him.

After everyone had done their once-over, Mayumi-sensei introduced them one by one.

"I'd like everyone to welcome Miyazaki Ao, Sasai Haruko, and Honda Kotaro, they'll be studying with us from now on! Say hello, everyone." They bowed as their names were said, and the class collectively greeted them, after which sensei quickly directed them to their seats in the back row, just to the right of me.

Sasai-san ended up sitting to the right of myself, with Miyazaki-kun to the right of her, and Honda-kun to the right of him. The rest of the first period proceeded to pass without any further interruptions, being mostly spent by sensei asking everyone how their week off was, and what they did for fun.

The members of the Music Club had gone to play at a festival in Kyoto, which caused quite a buzz in the student body. They were quite popular with their punk rock influences. The Kendo Club had a competition in Osaka where they took second place in the nation. The Chess Club hosted a meet-and-greet and friendly chess match with chess grandmasters from the Neo Tokyo metropolitan area, open to the public. My own club, the Programming Club, finished up and released our first completed computer game, with 100% of the sales going to charity.

We didn't have anyone else in our class that was part of any other club, but one of the new students shared that he had been visiting with family in Izu Oshima before coming to Neo Tokyo to begin the term here in a new school. His parents were lawyers who were in town for an extended court case, and weren't going anywhere particularly soon. He lamented that this always happened, jumping from one school to another throughout his schooling. He sounded nice enough, so we were sure to welcome him with not a single hint of animosity to be found.

"Be sure to be back by noon, we'll get started on the new chapter then!" When we broke for lunch, I immediately headed to the cafeteria to where we always met up, my friends and I. We were the "nerdy" kids, but we reveled in the name. I got there first, so I sat down and put my lunchbox on the table, waiting for the rest of the crew to show up.

First one was the always-charming Suzuki Kota, his glasses forever foggy, and his nose forever in a manual, or, in today's case, a Python game library's help docs. He didn't talk much in general, and nodded to me as he sat down and continued reading.

The first real firestarter to make it to the table with tray in hand was my best friend, Minami Nagisa, or Mini for short. By short, I meant short. She was the shortest person in our grade by at least 10cm, a chart-topping 125.6cm, the .6 being a thing of pride to her, and I never understood how she could be so small but be able to talk about so much. Her little head had so much useless knowledge to go off about, I'm sometimes surprised it can all fit in there. As far as appearances go, she's nothing special, mousy almond brown hair to match her eyes, and a lopsided grin that always moved because she wasn't going to stop talking, even if she was in Death's grips.

"Hey [REDACTED], did you manage to surf the wave down here to get here before me? You'll hurt yourself if you keep doing that, you know." She proceeded to inhale the contents of her tray before the others arrived more or less all at once. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds, even.

First up on the roster was the foreigner, or as close as you could get to it in our circle, Izzy Ikisaki. Half Spanish and half Japanese, he was the most normal out of all of us, surprisingly. Slicked back hair, coffee brown skin, and a shining necklace from a family vacation to Seoul, his place in our friend group was more because of the friends than the interests keeping everyone else around. He liked playing the guitar and singing opera, but was friends with us, so he stayed around more often than not, with us computer geeks.

Next to sit down was Tundra. A great wall of man that is, Tundra was of the Ainu people, the indigenous people who first settled Japan. He likes computers and painting, so he fits right in with the rest of us. His real name was lost to us at some point years back, and he didn't care enough to remind us, with Tundra being so much easier to remember, and the name suited him, too! A great giant polar bear is what he is, you know. We knew the name had stuck when his teacher started calling him that as well, much to his bemusement.

Last, but certainly not least, came the real brains behind our projects, Yuri Miyama. Violet hair and thick glasses with a small computer attached to the side, she almost fell into the 'unhygienic programmer' stereotype, but she was kept out of it by our constant reminders for her to bathe and brush her teeth regularly. If she was the last one in the club room after school, we'd come to school the next day and she'd still be there, banging out a world-generation algorithm for some insane idea she had that the rest of us couldn't even begin to understand or ever hope to use in the games we worked on collectively. After that happened the second time, we made sure not to assume she'd leave, making her come with us when it was time to head home. She lived with her grandparents, her parents had been killed years ago in the uprisings. She never talked about it, and no one else dared to bring it up with her. I've never heard her quiet voice take on a core of steel like it did when someone was researching some battle during the uprisings and was naming out civilian casualties. The two words, "Shut up." were unlike anything else we'd heard her say, and we only realized this after searching into it further and finding a small newspaper make mention that they left a small child behind. Just another tragic story that was a dime a dozen in that time period. Death and horrors were rampant...thank all that is that it's not that way any more. She sat down with her tray, her eyes more focused on what was displayed on the screen than any of us sitting in front of her, and smiled her little grin of hello when she finally cast her eyes around at us, before going back to her screen.

Lunch was a fun affair as always, the rest of it a slew of nerdy self-referential humor, some derisive discussion about the sub-quarks that Chinese scientists had discovered in the latest rounds of testing in the largest particle accelerator ever conceived, which dwarfed the now-outdated LHC by several kilometers. In order to break down quarks into even smaller pieces, the loop needs to be large enough to cause quarks to go faster-than-light and "warp" into empty space in the vacuum within the tube; if it hit solid matter in that state, it would cause a nuclear explosion. That's what happened with the East Atlantic Japanese Accelerator, which caused the destruction of Gibraltar seven years ago. I remember watching the news when that was reported...such a sad day.

Getting back from class was uneventful. I had said goodbye to my friends before I dumped my tray of food and brought it back up to get washed, so I immediately left the cafeteria before the bell rang, and was off by myself, halfway back to the hallway with our grade's classrooms within. I helped a girl whose locker was jammed shut along the way, after I saw that she was struggling with it. I ended up kicking it a few times and pulled it open with some difficulty, but got it open all the same. She thanked me but I waved it off with no concern, and was still able to get back to the classroom right as the first bell rang, giving me a minute or two to ready myself for the latter portion of the day.

As I walked into the room, I saw Mayumi-sensei on her cellphone at the desk, looking more angry than I'd ever seen her. She was whispering so I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she looked pissed. She saw me come in and waved hello distractedly at me and turned herself in her chair so she was looking away from me as she continued speaking. I haven't ever seen her look like that, so it must be something serious. I respected her privacy, immediately going down to the back before turning right to get to my seat, instead of my usual route of walking over to the teacher's desk and turning left down the rows of seats to get to my seat.

I sat down sideways in my chair, trying not to look at the teacher, but after a few seconds I shook my head and cast a sidelong glance towards her. She was holding the phone close to her face and had her body curled over, her forehead almost touching the edge of the desk. Suddenly she slumped her shoulders, sat up slowly, and as she hung up the phone I heard the last thing she said to the person on the other end. "...one to bait-and-switch like this. So be it."

She sighed loudly and looked up at me as the first people from the cafeteria started wandering into the room. She frowned, and beckoned me to her with her right index finger.

"Did you hear anything that I said on the phone?" She was still frowning, and looking up to me from her position in her chair. The tone wasn't demanding, but it was still authoritative, as she is my sensei.

I don't have any reason to lie to her, of course. What can be gained from lying? Usually nothing.

"I heard you say something about baiting and switching, and that was it. Am I in trouble?" She sighed again and stood up, before looking like she thought better of it, and sat back down.

"No, you're not. Just ignore it and everything should be fine. As well as it ever is in our country." She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling cutely as she did, before reverting to her mildly angry exception.

"No need to worry about it, alright?"

Oooookay then. I went and sat back down and just thought about what this could possibly entail as everyone came back inside and sat down and generally quieted down for a few minutes before sensei had gathered her composure and taken control of the class again. You could still see her purse her lips when she stopped talking, but most people would easily miss that cue.

We started the afternoon off by watching an interview with one of the local government officials speaking about another reconstruction project that would bring a good portion of the low income housing areas into better shape. It also included the construction of a park area nearby, in one of the sore spots left in the city, a square-kilometer, untended field that was levelled years ago during the short-lived and horribly bloody uprisings in and around Neo Tokyo. Well, it was still just Tokyo then, the government reforms that occurred afterwards, and the efforts to restore the city to being anything but a shadow of its' former self, are what caused the 'Neo' to be added.

"Has anyone been to the field that he was talking about? It used to be in the heart of the business district, but no one wanted to be near the radiation there, so it became a low income housing area." Some people, myself included, perked up at this statement. Why was there radiation?

Another student voiced this before I thought to raise my hand. "Why is there radiation there, sensei? There's nothing in the textbooks about the usage of nuclear weaponry during the uprisings."

Her eye twitched.

"I, um...yes, I'm sorry, I don't know what made me think that. Of course not. Let's just continue the lesson, shall we?" She wasn't going to admit that she was wrong, or worse, lying about what had happened, and something that contradicts our textbooks, no less!

"I think you're full of shit, sensei. Why would you say that?" You could've heard a pin drop, it went absolutely dead silent in the classroom. I looked over to see who had the gall to say that, but with them being on the opposite side of the room, there was too many people in the way to make out who it was. He had a tough, gravelly voice, so I'd guess Ekoda or Mikazuchi, both as close to the classic delinquent look as you could get in this day and age.

You do not insult someone. That's just something you don't do! Speaking ill of your teacher, in front of her, no less! That would land you in serious trouble, no matter what the reason was. I was just as intrigued as everyone else was, but to say that, no, no, no no no, no no no no no no.

The student stood up out of their seat and walked up to the front of the class. It was Ekoda, tall and muscular, and now he was standing in front of Mayumi-sensei, leaning on her podium with his right hand.

"Tell us the truth, why don't ya? No one will say a word about it outside of this room. You just let slip something you didn't want to, or aren't allowed to say by the government. Tell us, sensei. Or we can report you for lying to your students..." The implied threat hung in the air. Teachers were fired, and worse, all the time, for spreading misinformation around. Everyone knew it happened, and it was just something that you didn't really talk about.

Mayumi-sensei was taking this...oddly. She wasn't on the verge of tears, like the last teacher I'd seen go through this. She was avoiding looking at Ekoda, and was chewing on her lower lip, and generally looking to be done with him, which everyone would be, if they weren't so afraid as to what would happen next.

The sound of a chair being pushed back came from the back row. I turned, and saw Honda getting up out of his seat. He walked up to the front of the room, a very calm look on his face. Has he seen this sort of thing happen before as well?

He grabbed Ekoda roughly by the shoulder and spun him around, stopping him with both hands.

"Hey, the fuck you doing?" The next sentence turned to a scream of horror, as Honda's face slid off his body and onto the floor, with a heavy squelch. We couldn't see what lay behind it, but he was aware he wasn't going to survive the next sixty seconds. He tried to run. Curiously, Mayumi-sensei wasn't surprised in the slightest by this...development.

He didn't make it more than two steps. A giant jaw of horrid pink grinding doom lashed out of the Judge's assumed body, taking out his left leg. Blood spurt everywhere as he went down with a horrid, piercing scream. The Judge picked him up by the hair, using another tentacle of grimy flesh to skin him, taking clothes and skin down from the top, leaving bloody muscles and frantically darting eyes exposed for all to see. An arm came off next, as he tried to punch the Judge weakly, but as soon as his arm touched the horrid matter of the Judge, it surrounded his arm within itself and wrenched it off at the shoulder, leaving a shattered stump, not a clean cut from the shoulder.

His lower jaw came next, stopping the screaming somewhat. Reducing it in volume, definitely. The front row was recoiling back in terror, covered in entrails, spit, blood, and flesh that had gone flying from the horrorshow playing out by the board. What an awful thought, having some of the Judge's flesh on you. That, and not actually being the subject of its' attack.

It took a few minutes, but eventually there was nothing left of Ekoda aside from his scattered entrails and the egregious amounts of blood that had been splashed around during the...festivities. The solid mass of horror that was the Judge began shifting and sloshing around after it was done feasting on his body, slowly reducing in size until it was the form of a girl around our age, with lilac hair, and a school uniform that looked like a normal uniform from a decade or two ago. Blue skirt, a bit longer than the ones used now, and the normal sailor shirt. The Judge had a yellow ribbon in her hair, and she smiled to the class before addressing us.

Its' voice was the weirdest thing I'll probably ever hear. So many different voices, layered onto each other, creating a symphonic effect of what was probably millions of separate voices caught up in the void of horror that was its' consumption of those who didn't abide by the rules of our society.

"Thank you for allowing me to be in your class today. It really is a shame that some people can't just get along nicely, and thus need to be removed from their environment in such a way. I hope you all have a good time the rest of this term." She smiled brightly, and if we hadn't just seen that, it would look to be a normal girl thanking the class for her time spent there.

All of us knew better, but speaking anything about it would get us to end up like Ekoda, and so many others. Screw that.

"Thank you!" The class responded in kind, and instead of turning to leave immediately, like I'd heard from so many others on the Internet, she instead turned around and had a quick talk with Mayumi-sensei. You could see her smirk and agree with what the Judge was saying, and afterwards, the Judge left as usual.

Sensei turned to look at the blood all over the board, which had trickled down the walls in the minutes since the Judge had finished its' "meal".

She sighed heavily.

"Well, I'm not going to use the board until that gets all cleaned up. Those of you who need to go wash up, head on over to the showers, I'll call ahead so the attendant isn't surprised. The rest of you can do whatever until the end of the day." She sighed again, leaving the room, most likely to clean herself up. There was red flecks in her jet black hair. Not a very appealing effect.

I didn't think that I would see the Judge during my time in school, nevermind on the first day of a new term.

What a scary thing it was, the Judge. What it stood for, and what it meant.

No one is allowed to kill, aside from the Judge. Anyone else who kills, is killed by the Judge. There is no escaping it. Once it knows you deserve it, it will find you. It can be anyone, so no-one can be trusted. Ekoda, like so many others, thought he was safe among peers, but with any shape and form, the Judge is truly the faceless, unknown that will come and get you. But that's not to say it was a bad thing. Crime was basically non-existent. Anyone who committed a crime was dealt with in kind. The system worked, and there was no need to fear anything if you were nice. The whole issue of bullying, which sparked those bloody uprisings, was no longer an issue. If you bullied, you were removed. Permanently.

I spent the rest of the day chatting with Minami about what had happened, and what we should start working on next for our game projects. The plan in the works was an old-school shooter where you played as the Judge and faced off against foreign militaries. Us getting to see the Judge in action just strengthened our desire to see this project through to the end.

I went home on the now-on-time train, and spent the evening reading up on what the Judge does, and how hostile nations have attempted, and failed, to hold up against the enigmatic force that is. I IM'd a bunch of my friends about it, and while they were mostly jealous that we got to see the Judge in action ourselves, those who didn't attend the same school or even live in the same country weren't as enthusiastic about it. The Americans in particular were shocked that we could be enthused with the appearance of your everyday Lovecraftian nightmare. Though officially, Japan was at war with America, sweeping eastwards towards its' capital with every passing day. No one here knew why we were at war, but we didn't question it much. The Judge leads the assault there mostly by itself, and if the Judge deemed it necessary, the normal people like you and me aren't going to tell it that it can't.

All in all, it was just another normal day in my country.

A/N: What a lovely way to start off this third and final story in the kind-of trilogy. I can't imagine who the Judge is. More importantly, just what the hell are its' intentions here, in a post-timeskip world?